In a recent years, as computers have become ever more powerful, there has been a proliferation of software application packages for designing and creating complex full-color images that can be subsequently printed out using color printing devices. The quality of such images created readily achieves, or surpasses, that capable of being achieved even with photographic images. Consequently, an industry has developed around the creation of such images employing a large number of graphic artists and the like whose occupation is to create complex and appealing images for general public consumption.
The complex images created by software application packages (such as Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator (Trade Marks), Quark's Express (Trade Mark) and other packages of the same ilk) generally consist of a large number of substantially independent objects which are often independently created by the graphic artist. One attribute sometimes found in such software application packages is the ability to create blends between a first color and second color and to apply the blend to any of the objects.
By way of example, a circle 1 is shown in FIG. 1 which is a simple object from which other more complex objects can be made up. This object 1 has a predefined blend from a first dark color 2 to a second lighter color 3.
Although such blends are known in software application packages such as the ones mentioned above, such conventional software application packages disadvantageously do not allow for the manipulation of a blend. For example, they do not enable a fine alternation of a blend to a slightly different color.